saw that in the news today, wow. it's crazy how supposedly smart businesspeople can be so wrong, i guess that comes with the territory when the world moves so quickly and no one is really quite sure what the future holds. remember friendster? that being said, i still think they were suckers to pay $850 million for something with theoretical potential down the road.

it would be fun to get back issues of wired, business week, fortune, etc. from 3-5 years ago and see how many of the companies they drooled over in hype articles actually still exist, or reached anywhere near the potential they claimed. probably goes both ways too, some who did beat the odds.

grizzleb

07-04-2010, 10:46 PM

It's kind of crazy seeing the figures for this kind of thing and thinking '850 mil? - really?'. But then you just assume that they must know something you don't. Or that that amount of money isn't really as large as it sounds in the scales that they work on. But anyone who's ever seen bebo could surely guess it was never worth that much. It really was a poor, poor site.

mms

08-04-2010, 11:37 AM

big business likes to waste big money as it makes them look powerful in my opinion, then they can moan about the decline of whatever it is when they don't make anything like the stupid money they paid for it, when actually it's their fault and they caused the fucking bubble.

Leo

08-04-2010, 02:31 PM

what i find interesting is that when these big business fatcats lose big money, they don't really seem to lose. blackstone group *lost* billions when they defaulted on the loans from their purchase of the massive sty town apartment complex in nyc, but basically wrote it off and moved on to the next deal. donald trump has had projects in default and bankruptcy hearings, but he still lives the high life and continues to make huge deals. if you or i default on a mortgage, we get kicked to the curb. when they do it, it just seems to be a temporary blip.